Doritos commercial contest winner stunned when his goat was victorious

(RNN) - Ben Holst and his wife were sitting on the couch at their home in Atlanta watching the Super Bowl when the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl ad he helped produce popped onscreen.

It was only then he knew the goat was victorious.

"We had no clue," he said. "You had to watch the Super Bowl to know you'd won."

Holst, who owns an Atlanta production company called Tunewelders, did the post production sound for the commercial about a Doritos-crunching goat. He was part of a team headed by ad creator Ben Callner, whom Holst calls a "good buddy" and frequent collaborator.

Mr. and Mrs. Holst didn't break into a touchdown dance when the ad aired.

"We were speechless," he said. "She grabbed my arm. I lost my breath and we watched it play out."

Sound was a big part of the commercial. It featured a raucous score provided by Doritos along with the sound of the goat devouring Doritos then emitting an ear-piercing scream and slamming a door with its hoof before attacking its bearded owner, who had cut off its snack supply.

As it turns out, nothing sounds as much like a goat eating Doritos as a goat eating Doritos.

"The goat chews are actual goat crunches," Holst said. "Ben had a specific sound he wanted, and he tried to cheat them with other, human crunch sounds."

There was just no substitute for an actual goat chewing, which Holst credited location sound man Greg Linton with capturing.

The goat's piercing shriek was a last-second addition, Holst said. A friend of Callner's who lives in Savannah, GA, phoned it in the day before the contest ended and Holst edited it into the final product hours before deadline, he said.

Holst, Callner and others tried their larynxes at goat screams, but the late arrival fitted perfectly and, Holst thinks, helped make the commercial unique.

It hasn't really sunk in that his project won a national contest against stiff competition from all across the nation – Holst said their entry was the only one that didn't come from Southern California.

"My parents were asking me how it felt, and I really didn't know what to say," said Holst, who is originally from Simsbury, CT, and who graduated from the University of Georgia. "Right now, what feels so good about it is you don't have to convince anyone that you can go to battle anymore. Now I can go to a sales meeting and when they ask what kind of qualifications I have, I can say I mixed audio on a Super Bowl advertisement. I can let my work speak for itself. I can compete."

The age of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter is a good time to be an advertising video producer, too.

"It's really exciting that something I spent so much time on will live on in social media," he said. "Nowadays, things don't just air, and they're gone. Now, they stick around."

The other Doritos winner was Fashionista Daddy, about a dad and his touch-football pals who forego their game to consume Doritos and help his daughter play a game of dress-up.

That commercial was ranked fourth and Goat 4 Sale was seventh on USA Today's Admeter.

Callner, along with the creators of the four other finalists, received $25,000 and a trip to New Orleans where they watched the Super Bowl in a luxury suite.